


The Light From The Other Room

by Circumstellars



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Number Five | The Boy Whump, Season 2 canonverse, poor poor elliott, unconscious diego
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26575237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Circumstellars/pseuds/Circumstellars
Summary: Originally posted to tumblr inspired by the headcanon prompt posted by @princesskittenoftardis:'Imagine the (siblings of your choice) overhearing Five telling Elliott how much he loves them, and how he would rather die than lose his family again. Bonus if Five yelled at the same sibling(s) only minutes earlier.'-Elliott doesn't know what these otherworldly, unusual people want from him, but he's willing to play ball to learn more... even if that means quickly and gracefully forgiving them for tying and gagging him in his own home. One of them has come back injured quite severely, and no amount of coffee is seeming to assuage the Kid.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Diego Hargreeves
Comments: 7
Kudos: 170





	The Light From The Other Room

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the gap after Diego is stabbed S2EP2 and while he’s recovering under Lila's care, and doesn't align with every detail of the original prompt. Un-beta'd so all mistakes are embarrassing and my own. First ficlet posted to tumblr.
> 
> Original: https://circumstellars.tumblr.com/post/628061743665577984/i-dont-normally-do-the-writing-myself-but-this

The pain is immediate, the cramps are in possibly every muscle Elliott has. When consciousness hits him like a thunderbolt, it drops him into the middle of a tension-laced back and forth between... didn't they mention names? The _aliens_ \- er, his uninvited guests are muttering lowly not far away. The tightly wrapped gag has chafed both corners of his mouth and he can't seem to focus.

'You didn't untie him?'

 _A kid?_ Oh! The _Kid_. Elliott opens his eyes with a start and spots through bleary vision the (alien?) boy just a few feet away, looking unnervingly human and pawing at something on his neck. He looks unimpressed at the response he gets.

'Was I supposed to?'

There's a deep, exhausted sigh and before he can grab his bearings again, Elliott feels loosening pressure behind him. Two, Three, Four... Five! That's it! _Shit_ \- had he really stared them down the barrel of his shotgun? _He should be dead_ it registers, but the thought is fleeting and broken by Five's weary voice; there's small, barely audible cracks in every few syllables when he says,

'The assumption here is that you will behave.’ Elliott snaps his head obediently just before the gag is loosened and the relief floods over the aches in all his nooks and corners. 'Put on some coffee: I need to think.' He can't see Five behind his chair just then, but his words sound far away, clipped short by a quick flash and the falling of dead air to replace him.

Elliott can hear the English woman fussing in the next room, and a quiet snoring from a third party, and he licks at the dried blood crusted in the right corner of his mouth. However his limbs protest, he gets up carefully anyway.

He doesn't know when Five plans on returning, but Elliott doesn't want to find out what happens if the coffee isn't finished when he does.

\---

Elliott doesn't sleep that night. He isn't the only one.

It's well into the earliest morning hours when the third pot of coffee finishes brewing, and only just, before Five blinks into the kitchen to pour yet another cup. Elliott peers at him from his desk in the adjacent room, where Five has been keeping him busy monitoring his collection of radar equipment. Elliott hasn't the faintest what half these devices do, but the boy seems incredibly invested, and every little blip on his screens is scrutinised by Five immediately.

Elliott quietly takes a bite of cereal he's only half-interested in eating, and ever so carefully watches the boy in the kitchen over a few spoonfuls of tasteless granola.

Five looks eerily pensive. He's staring into the blackness of the coffee pot on the counter, and Elliott can barely see his unmoving figure, licked over occasionally by yellow light flowing in from where his wounded brother lay resting in the common room. In the quietude he can hear a pair of soft, twin snores float through the flat.

He has _so_ many questions. They're bubbling up behind his lips but he is careful to say nothing until Five breaks his moody silence. Elliott doesn't think much of himself, but there are bits and pieces he'd rather maintain un-melted by an unpredictable alien teenager.

\--

When Five does finally move, Elliott had long given up studying his motionless shape and was arms deep in rolls of labelled film canisters scattered about him. He nearly screamed when a deeply troubled sigh dropped in behind his ear and brought him to attention- he swallowed it quickly.

'You're out of gauze.'

He nods shortly in acknowledgement, his eyes following as Five leans his lower back into Elliott's desk and weaves his arms over one another tightly. The expression on the boy's face even in the dim lamp light from the next room looks stormy and blackened; his eyebrows are knitted deeply and however impossible it might seem his folded mouth looks like it belongs to a man four times his age. Elliott finds it moderately disturbing. It's another long few minutes before Five mumbles, barely audible into the dead air,

'Was he breathing? You know, when they got here,' and he's not looking at Elliott but even a hermit like he was versed enough in social interactions to pick up on the subtleties in Five's voice. The question was so steady and so calm, _too_ calm, the kid's eyes _too_ stony - his posture _too_ impassive. Elliott's eyes flickered over to the opening of the atrium across the way.

'I didn't see much - I was um, you had me, you know,' he vaguely gestures to being strapped to one of the dentist chairs nearby. Five doesn't say anything, so he keeps going and drops his spoon into the bowl in front of him. 'But-but uh, the girl took care of it,' he says uselessly. 'The other one-'

'Diego.'

'-right, D-Diego, he didn't make much noise at first. I couldn't see what she was doing but she sounded... upset. Then the guy started screaming for bit before quieting down, I guess, until you showed up.'

Five's expression remains poker-still. Elliott swallows audibly. 'Mostly the guy--Diego--' he is quick to correct himself as Five's eyes slide icily in his direction, 'wasn't saying much, sort of gasping I guess, he sounded really hurt. Sort of just saying one thing really,' Elliott sits back in his chair, holding one hand with the other in hopes he isn't visibly quivering. He's fascinated by these newcomers, especially this one, but part of him can't shuck the thick layer of nerves that buzzes over his skin in Five's presence. It's almost like his body is scared of something his eyes aren't registering beyond the schoolboy shorts and preppy, embroidered blazer.

He can see the thin black line of Five's mouth part, so the rest rapidly tumbles from Elliott's lips: 'Kept saying, uh “ _Dad_ ", a lot, or-or… something.'

**_WHAP._ **

He launches out of his chair at the sharp smack of a fist on the brittle wood of his desk. It shakes and Elliott shakes too, but in a rapid blink Five is gone from the room. _What just happened?_

He catches a shadow in the corner of his eye and moves to follow it out into the large atrium once more. The whole room is dark and yellowed by the single lamp on the corner table, and its casting bewitching phantoms on his dingy walls. Diego is laid there on his sofa, quiet in sleep save for a few stuttering wheezes that sound quite painful to Elliott.

'He's really stupid.'

Elliot exclaims under his breath and snaps his head toward Five. The boy is nestled in the darkest corner on this level, pressed up against the barrier across the way. He can't see his face, but can tell he's crumpled up into himself just as he was at Elliott's desk a moment before.

'I don't know how he made it to adulthood, quite honestly,' and Five says this gravely; he is quite serious. 'I can't believe how stupid he is, even now.'

Elliott doesn't know what to say. He says nothing.

Diego fusses in his sleep a moment before his breathing settles, encumbered but steady.

'He knows. He's voluntarily- _purposely_ stupid because he _knows_.' Five sounds strained. His breath is loud enough to hear from several feet across the room; Elliott doesn't know if it's because the room is quiet or Five is loud. 'He must know on some level that I'm always going to come back to break his fall. Maybe they all do.'

For an extended moment, nothing followed Five's muted words. Elliott feels like a haunting in the doorway. He shuffles uncomfortably from foot to foot. He doesn't know if Five is talking _to_ him or _at_ him, or perhaps neither, maybe he's already forgotten his harmless new acquaintance was still in the room completely.

Elliott is overwhelmed with unbelievable curiosity and debilitating ignorance; he doesn't know the first thing about any of these people, or their closely guarded secrets. He's not sure he even experiences the same reality as them, so he is not sure he understands Five's hum of suppressed anger - if it is in fact anger at all.

Suddenly, he wants to leave. The room feels smaller, more intimate and it's like he doesn't belong in his own living room. He doesn't know if he was meant to ask, but he does.

'So then... _why_?'

It's all he gets out, not a entire thought but at the same time a fittingly complete question. _Why?_

Be that as it may, he doesn't expect Five to answer. Elliott isn't sure exactly what he is to this kid--alien-- _person_ , or what purpose he is meant to serve here, but he is almost certainly sure it is not _Trusted Confidant_. He may very well be superfluous furniture to any of them, even in his own house.

It's an eternity before Elliott decides to pull himself away, escape whatever surreal little bubble is suffocating him in this doorway. The unadulterated exhaustion in his sore joints and bones is slithering up the back of his neck all at once.

He's suddenly startled by a hand reaching out from the darkness beyond the door. He's pulled an arms length toward what turns out to be the dark figure of The Girl, who raises a finger to her own lips. She doesn't speak and doesn't move, and Elliott stares into what features of her face he can make out in the poor lighting, but she's clearly already focused beyond him. Her expression is absolutely opaque as she looks toward the weak light spilling out of the main room doorway.

 _It's futile now_ , he thinks. He is certain they are completely out of earshot when he hears it - or maybe he doesn't, the voice is so incredibly fragile and quiet and _young_ that Elliott is sure it belongs to no one in this house that he knows of.

Perhaps it was a pining spirit passing in the night, the sound of it’s longing confession diffusing instantly in the air as if never spoken at all.

'... It's because I love them.'


End file.
